malena stool wrote:Serving soldiers who are regularly placed in harms way are jailed for shooting enemy combatants, while scum such as Brooks and Coulson are paying for hacked information and raking in vast personal fortunes.

I know malena, their snitches ought to be jailed as well and to think this went on for years, yet the press avoided Regulating and leveson's enquiry was yet another waste of money.

The only problem with the press being regulated is who will regulate them? Who would trust the likes of Cameron, Miliband, Blair or any of our 'Honourable Members'?

The Press Complaints Committee is another toothless tiger. the only person I have any respect for is a Woman, Margaret Hodges who is on the ball, fearless in her condemnation and her dept is very well informed

Hacking trial hears how Rebekah Brooks discussed phone hacking while at a birthday party for the Prime Minister at Chequers

Hacking trial hears how Rebekah Brooks discussed phone hacking while at a birthday party for the Prime Minister at Chequers

Rebekah Brooks arriving at the Old Bailey on Tuesday Photo: REX FEATURES

Jasper Copping By Jasper Copping

6:40PM GMT 26 Nov 2013

Rebekah Brooks told a close friend of David Cameron’s at a Chequers birthday party for the Prime Minister how to hack mobile telephones, a court heard on Tuesday.

The former News International chief executive was said to have made the remarks to Dom Loehnis who was seated next to her at the dinner in October 2010, at the Buckinghamshire retreat.

Mr Loehnis, who had Mr Cameron as his best man at his wedding, told the Old Bailey he had asked Mrs Brooks about the hacking investigation and that she had discussed the techniques by which messages could be intercepted.

Mr Loehnis, a recruitment consultant and former journalist, said: “She (Mrs Brooks) said at a certain point people had discovered that you could get into mobile phone voicemails by tapping in a distinct code.

He said Mrs Brooks, a former editor of the News of the World (NotW) and The Sun, did not give any indication of whether she thought it was illegal or right or wrong.

During the conversation, she also expressed doubts that Andy Coulson, also a former NotW editor and then Mr Cameron’s director of communications, could remain in his job, given the fact the story “didn’t seem to be going away”.

Mr Loehnis, a friend of Mr Cameron’s from Eton, said: “She said that she wasn’t sure that he (Coulson) could survive.”

The court heard that Mr Loehnis was contacted by police when they found a handwritten letter he had sent to Mrs Brooks following her resignation as chief executive at News International in July 2011, in which he expressed his sympathy for her situation.

Jonathan Laidlaw QC, defending Mrs Brooks, claimed the “two minute” conversation between his client and Mr Loehnis was not at admission that she had been involved in phone hacking but was simply a discussion of what was a topical subject at the time.

He said: “It was common knowledge, not just in Fleet Street, that there were weaknesses in telephone security voicemail systems and both of you were acknowledging that it was possible to access voicemails.” Mr Loehnis agreed.

Mr Laidlaw told jurors Mrs Brooks was “relaxed” during the dinner for 60 of Mr Cameron’s family and closest friends.

He put it to Mr Loehnis: “She never hid from you her knowledge that it was possible to access voicemails from the late 90s or made more than what was a reflection of common knowledge at the time.

“She certainly did not say or even hint that she had known of phone hacking at the News of The World during her editorship or that she had been involved in the commission of phone hacking.”

“No, she didn’t,” the witness replied.

Mr Loehnis said the exchange lasted a couple of minutes, and agreed he was also preparing to read an ode in tribute to Mr Cameron during the dinner.

The court was also shown a copy of an email sent from News International lawyer Tom Crone to then NotW editor Coulson in 2006, in the wake of the allegations against Glenn Mulcaire, a private investigator used by the newspaper, and Clive Goodman, a reporter.

The email discloses what police allegedly told Mrs Brooks, who relayed the information to Mr Crone. It includes a perception of what the investigation would mean for the newspaper.

Mr Crone wrote: “They suggest that they were not widening the case to include other NotW people but would do so if they got direct evidence, say NotW journos directly accessing the voicemails (this is what did for Clive).”

Mrs Brooks, 45, of Churchill, Oxfordshire; Mr Coulson, 45, from Charing, Kent; Ian Edmondson, 44, from Raynes Park, south west London; and Stuart Kuttner, 73, from Woodford Green, Essex, all deny conspiring with others to hack phones between October 3, 2000, and August 9, 2006.